China and democracy
Documentary “Joshua: teenager vs superpower” is a staggering account about the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong in 2014. It stirred my idealistic democratic heart. 20-years-old Joshua was recently jailed for causing the demonstrations after ruling of a judge was overruled by the justice secretary. No doubt he is a political prisoner in “democratic” Hong Kong. What is more apalling for a European raised with western values is that he was only 17 during the protests!
What sparked the protests? Election commitee chooses candidates for Chief Executive of Hong Kong. The election commitee is appointed by Beijing. If Hong Kong should be truly democratic, people should be able to choose their Chief Executive without Beijing.
Chinese Middle School Students
Step aside from the democratic message of the documentary. Yes, you read well, a 17 years old inspired hundreds thousands of people to go in the streets and put up with the Chinese tear gas. Should one take it even seriously?
But Joshua’s case seems not to be that rare. In fact, Chinese middle school students played an important role during formation of Singapore during 1950s. They sparked many riots and carried important political power when fighting for their cause. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of S’pore, praises them for their focus and unity in his memoirs. The problem was they were easily radicalized by the communists later.
What’s without a doubt is that Joshua’s message resonated with many people in Hong Kong and with more around the world. But how do Mainland Chinese see this?
The Middle Kingdom and the “century of shame”
China is like a big ball rolling forward. They don’t look left or right, they just roll.
Individual freedoms seem to go sideways for The Middle Kingdom to shine again. This is at least my feeling from number of conversations I tried to hold with Chinese about the party and its practices in China. They just don’t want to talk about it. They almost make me feel ignorant to bring up this topic. (btw new phenomenon, now that I returned to Asia in 2017, they have used Trump as an argument against democracy) And I have talked to different people from different “casts” of the society: from students who settled in Europe, through businessman, to monks in Tibet.
Interview with Neil Shen by The Economist about AI in China reminds me such conversations.
My understanding is that most of the Chinese are aware that there are people mistreated by the regime but many does not seem to care too much. Also many has been “brain washed” through Chinese National Education. Many seem to really believe that Tibet has always been part of China and that China saved Tibet from fat monks exploiting the normal population and from British influences. Chinese textbooks are still calling the 100 years before 1950 century the Century of shame and humiliation. The textbooks portray China as an underdog being bullied by the western nations. This was communist’s technique to unify Chinese towards the same goal. And Mao is portrayed as the person who unified China.
To be fair, I don’t think there is a country which would not use “brain washing” in their techniques. For example we Czechs call the dark ages the time we were incorporated in Austrian empire and Czech history teachers still make it seem Czechia was the economically most developed country in the empire and we suffered from Austrians. I have to fight about this in my family; people get very emotional about this issue.
The successes of Chinese system are however undoubted, they pulled 680 million people out of poverty (as defined by the World Bank) in 1981–2010. The truth is that strong ruling party had a huge role in this.
Chinese decided to play on the Western field in the market economy, but in Chinese style. And they seem to be winning at the moment unlike anyone else was able before. They opened only slowly to the West. They are very good in building walls: great example is the firewall to protect homegrown Internet companies. (The side effect is of course the ultimate control over the flow information to Chinese.)
On the other hand exports has been subsidized by artificial undervaluing Yuan. West has benefited from this in the short run, but it has disrupted many businesses in the West and people are becoming unhappy about this. This resulted in Brexit and Trump’s presidency.
Now China has a huge almost self-sustainable functional market. In fact not many companies go anymore build factories for cheap labor but rather to reach this market of ~1.4 billion people. They lack natural resources in China, hence many investments are being made in Africa and Australia.
Inevitable success?
Weren’t these successes just inevitable? Would it happen with democratic China? Almost certainly not.
The government was able to pull off the economic and social reforms which would be almost impossible in democratic country. Like one child policy for example.
Eastern block countries decided from one day to the other to switch and enter the cruel world of capitalism in 1989. With very little experience and very little protection we (yes I come from the East of Europe) decided to play against the experienced capitalists. And we lost — Eastern Europe economies are now dominated by Western capital and comparing to China not many companies (particularly in tech) are able to innovate and compete in the world market.
Despite open market, GDP per capita in the Czech Republic is more than half of Germany. We sold ourselves to the devil. That does not mean our lives did not improve. Actually the improvement was immediate and the lives has not been as bad as in China before the reforms.
We are returning to order of the world before colonization.
Is it a bubble?
China is reporting staggering numbers every year. It has been questioned by many economists how much true these numbers are. The party is heavily corrupted. Also the government must reach deep in their pockets to keep the growth up.
The growth is also not just he numbers, right? When you go around China the fact that the growth was too fast is just in your face. Buildings were built quickly and are badly maintained, there is a lack of experienced craftsmen so many works are badly done, internet goes further than the roads, and there are huge buildings in middle of nowhere. Millions of people from the West work on the coast but cannot legally settle down there. So they still have their home and family in the East.
Also, the growth is now possible because the majority of the population is now in the productive age, they don’t have to take care about many children and elders. This is how Chinese demographics looks like (one child policy was introduced in 1979, i.e. it the first generation is around 38):
Now Compare it to healthier Indonesia:
In Europe, we certainly also have aging population. But,the decline in birth rate has been naturally smooth:
So there definitely won’t be as a shock as big as for China.
So is the ball rolling against a concrete wall and once it crashes, it will send the whole world into a deep recession? And when that happens what will happen to the party? Are we going to see more such protests in Hong Kong?
(And a side question: Could AI and robotization solve even this? I will write an article on this in the future.)
Fate of Hong Kong
You see — China was very content with the resolution of one China two systems under which British left Hong Kong. China has been in the game for the long run and their moves are not reckless. They fall back on more than 2000 years of history and it is only a matter of time when Hong Kong will be “Chinafied”.
One of the techniques to colonize a territory used in the past by Chinese was to send there enough people to dominate the indigenous population. They applied exactly this in Tibet. Lhasa is nowadays a Chinese city. I traveled around Tibetan towns and only seldom villages are truly Tibetan now. Hong Kong can expect the same fate. Mainlanders has access to Hong Kong’s universities, 100–150 mainlanders move in Hong Kong every day.
It now feels more like when not if Hong Kong will become just another Chinese city.
Some people call for independence of Hong Kong but it’s clear that is never going to happen. There would never be more than a moral help from the other countries. However, China still needs to tread carefully as good slate in international relations is important to them; this is chance for Hong Kongers.
Hong Kongers, if you stay radical, if you keep your heads up, the “Chinification” can be much slower… Also, once Chinese government will stop to deliver the growth, its status will be very weakened. There will be space to push for more democracy in China in the near future!
